Where to eat in the Castelli Romani: porchetta, fraschette and wine

The rules of the table up here

Three things to understand before you go looking for lunch in the hills.

Lunch is late. One o'clock is early. Two is normal. A place that is empty at half past twelve is not bad, it is simply not open yet in any meaningful sense.

The good places look plain. Paper on the tables, wine in a jug, a printed sheet instead of a menu. The ones with terraces, tablecloths and photographs of the food are priced for the view.

Monday is closed. Widely, in every town. Plan around it.

Ariccia and the porchetta

Ariccia is the porchetta town, and porchetta is the reason many Romans drive up here at all.

A whole pig is boned, packed with rosemary, garlic, pepper and wild fennel, rolled, and roasted slowly until the skin is glass. It is sliced thin, served at room temperature, and eaten either in a panino or on a paper plate with nothing beside it. Ariccia's version carries a protected designation, which in practice means the town takes it very seriously.

You eat it in a fraschetta: originally a room where a wine producer sold his own wine and let customers bring their own food, marked by a branch — frasca — hung by the door. Most now serve food too, but the format survives. You sit at long shared tables on benches, order by pointing, and drink white wine measured in quartini, half-litres and litres.

Beyond the porchetta, expect coppiette (dried spiced pork strips, chewy and hot), salami, sheep's cheese, olives, pickled vegetables, and pizza bianca still warm. Nothing costs much. A generous lunch for two with wine sits around thirty euros.

Ariccia is also worth the walk itself: Bernini rebuilt the town square and the round church of Santa Maria dell'Assunzione for the Chigi family, and the road in crosses a monumental nineteenth-century viaduct with the wooded valley below.

Frascati and the wine

Frascati has its own fraschette, concentrated in the lanes behind the main square, and they are the more urban version of the same idea — narrower, noisier, full after work.

The wine is white, made from Malvasia and Trebbiano on volcanic soil. Ask for Frascati Superiore DOCG if you want the serious version, or simply drink what the house pours, which is the point of the format.

For a proper tasting, the family estates on the slopes below the town pour by the glass and will usually show you the cellar if you ring the same morning.

The rest of the map

Genzano makes the bread. Pane casareccio di Genzano is a large, dense, wood-fired loaf with a thick dark crust, protected by designation and genuinely different from what you will find in Rome. Buy a half and carry it with you.

Marino is the other wine town, and holds a grape festival at the beginning of October during which the fountain in the main square famously runs with wine. It is chaotic, drunken and entirely authentic.

Nemi has the wild strawberries — tiny, perfumed, in season from late spring — eaten with cream at any bar on the village street.

Castel Gandolfo has the lakeside, where the habit is fried food and white wine at a table almost in the water.

Two ways to do a food day

The short version. Lunch in a fraschetta in Ariccia, coffee in the square, strawberries in Nemi in the afternoon, a glass at a Frascati winery before you drive down.

The long version. Bread in Genzano, cheese and salami from a village alimentari, and a picnic wherever the view is best — the ridge at Tusculum, or the shore of Lake Albano. Then a fraschetta for dinner as the light goes.

The second is better, and it is the reason our cars have a tailgate that folds into a table.